A St. Paul man shot his wife in the head and cut up her body after she told him she planned to leave him and take their son with her, charges say.

Steven Roger Johnson, 34, was charged Wednesday, Jan. 9, with second-degree intentional murder in the death of Manya Jewel Johnson.

Johnson admitted to police that he had been drinking Sunday when his wife said she was leaving him, according to the criminal complaint filed in Ramsey County District Court.

He told police he shot her in the head with a handgun, the complaint said. The document did not say where Johnson got the alleged weapon or whether it had been found.

Manya Johnson, 32, was killed Sunday, Jan. 6, after telling her husband she was leaving him and taking their toddler son with her. This photo is from her LinkedIn page.

He moved his wife's body into their bathroom shower and dismembered it with a saw, the complaint said. He placed the body in plastic bins, then cleaned the house to cover the crime, Johnson told police, according to the complaint.

Prosecutor Yasmin Mullings said during Johnson's court appearance Wednesday that there were indications the couple's 17-month-old son was present at the time of the slaying. The boy was uninjured and is being cared for by someone else, police said.

Manya Johnson, 32, did not show up for her job at Target Corp. on Monday morning. A co-worker sent a text message to Steven Johnson, who filed a missing-person report.

That afternoon, he and the co-worker went to the couple's house in the 1400 block of Sheldon Avenue near Lake Como, the complaint said.

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Police were already there.

The charges contain these additional details:

Police had been called by a friend of Johnson's whose prison term overlapped Johnson's when he was serving time for a 1996 rape conviction.

Johnson had told the man, Nathan Schram, that his wife was dead and that he had put her body in the garage of Schram's home in White Bear Lake. Schram called police.

There is no indication Schram was involved in the killing, police said.

At the Sheldon Avenue house Monday, Johnson told police that his wife left for work at 7 that morning and that he had taken their toddler to day care about 9 a.m. After he got the text message from her co-worker, he left work to look for his wife, he told police. Johnson and the co-worker found Manya Johnson's car at a park-and-ride lot on North Hamline Avenue and County Road B2 in Roseville, they told officers.

While talking with Johnson at the house, St. Paul police got a call from an agent with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. The agent was with White Bear Lake police at Schram's home. They had found a dismembered body in several plastic storage bins in the garage, the agent told St. Paul officers. The officers arrested Johnson and took him to headquarters, where he admitted to the killing, the complaint said.

Manya Johnson died of a single gunshot wound to the left side of her head, where the bullet remained, an autopsy disclosed.

Her co-worker, Claudine Starkey, declined to comment on the case Wednesday "out of respect for the family."

Johnson was convicted of aiding and abetting first-degree criminal sexual conduct in Anoka County in 1996. He was 18 when he and two other men followed a 28-year-old woman as she pulled into a Coon Rapids driveway. They forced her into their car, drove her to Sand Creek Park and raped her repeatedly. He was sentenced to 17 years in prison and released in 2008. He remained on supervised release as of his Monday arrest.

The Johnsons married in 2009 and bought the Como Park house in 2010, according to marriage and property records.

Manya Johnson earned a master's degree in counseling psychology from Bethel University in 2009, according to her LinkedIn profile. She worked at Target as a manager in marketing operations.

Steven Johnson declined an interview request through the Ramsey County Jail, where he is being held. He made his first court appearance Wednesday afternoon. Ramsey County District Judge Gary Bastian agreed to a prosecutor's request for Johnson to be held in lieu of $2 million bail.

Though Johnson was employed at the time of his wife's death, and thus did not immediately qualify for a public defender, the judge appointed one for him. "I suspect he feels he won't be working" in the foreseeable future, Bastian said. He set Johnson's next court date for Jan. 22.

Relatives of both Steven and Manya Johnson declined comment for this report.